Young Actors Research Articles

Dismissed or Acclaimed for Breaking Norms: The Discursive Positioning of Young Active Citizens in Czech Online Media

Despite new affordances available since the mainstreaming of digital media in countries with high levels of internet connectivity, young actors in teenage years are a group whose involvement in social and political affairs remains constrained by prevailing stereotypes regarding the social role of youth and acceptable forms of civic engagement. This paper explores the discourse on youths’ active citizenship found in Czech online media outlets, conceptualised as adult-governed spaces. Considering age as a significant exclusionary category in approaches to citizenship, the discursive construction of young active Czech citizens is studied on six concrete local actors and analysed via two types of relational positioning: (1) intra-generational (youth-to-youth) and (2) inter-generational (youth-to-adult). Media representations reveal normative expectations of youth as political actors that range from a refusal to recognise their participation to acclaiming them for it. Depending on the intersection of the actors’ agendas, their personal profiles, and the political orientation of the media outlets, the media depict the actors either negatively as deviant or positively as exceptional, reflecting contemporary ideo-political conflicts in Czechia. The paper concludes that the young age of the actors serves as an amplification factor for discreditation of a counter-attitudinal political agenda.

THEATRICAL ART AS A MEANS OF DEVELOPING INTERPERSONAL SKILLS IN PUPILS WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS

The article deals with the problem of the effectiveness of correctional work of higher education students with younger students with autism spectrum disorders. The aim of the article is to theoretically substantiate the problem and highlight the results of an empirical study on identifying the level of development of interpersonal interaction skills in primary school children with autism spectrum disorders through the means of theatrical art. The theoretical analysis of the problem has shown that the acquisition of experience of interaction, and skills of contact with children is recognized as one of the priority directions of personality development at the primary school age. In science, communication is considered as the interaction and establishment of contacts between individuals, which results in influencing each other, exchanging information, choosing a certain direction of joint action, as well as perceiving and understanding the interlocutor. It was determined that the artistic and communicative experience gained at the primary school age is a guarantee not only of the child’s general cultural development, but also of his or her liberation, confidence, and personal activity in later life. The emphasis was placed on the fact that theatrical activity proves to be an effective means of socialisation of primary schoolchildren, as it promotes comprehension of the moral implications of a literary work and participation in the game. This form of activity creates favourable conditions for development, focused on the holistic development of the personality of a child with ASD, activation of his/her creativity, and key mental processes. It is emphasised that the solution to the problem will be the implementation of a correctional and developmental program by higher education students aimed at developing interpersonal skills in primary school children with autism spectrum disorders. Under our supervision, students of Oles Honchar Dnipro National University conducted a study of the level of development of interpersonal skills in primary school children with autism spectrum disorders. The study involved primary school children with autism spectrum disorders in grades 1-A: 13 children – experimental group, and 1-B: 14 children – control group. The results of the study allowed higher education students to conclude that the development of interpersonal skills in primary school children with autism spectrum disorders can be successful under conditions of specially organised, systematised, and regular classes in the correctional and developmental program «Young Actors». The empirical study applied methods and strategies for implementing theatrical classes in the educational process with children with autism spectrum disorders. The use of theatrical art helps to improve communication skills, emotional understanding and social adaptation in children with autism spectrum disorders. The results obtained indicate the effectiveness of the correctional work of higher education students with children with autism spectrum disorders. Conclusions have been drawn regarding the effectiveness of the corrective developmental program in shaping interpersonal interaction skills in children with autism spectrum disorders through theatrical art. The practical results of the work can be useful for teachers, psychologists and parents who work with this category of children and seek to improve their quality of life and social interaction. In addition, the educational environment will contribute to social adaptation and the development of interaction skills in children with autism spectrum disorders.

Stereotypes in the performance of young actors in the contemporary Iraqi theater

Stereotypes in the performance of young actors in the contemporary Iraqi theater

Rallying Europe: young women and men searching for a life and a future

ABSTRACT The turmoil of the mid-twentieth century saw young people mobilized for action across Europe in an unprecedented manner. Concurrently, against the backdrop of the struggle between democratic and authoritarian projects, war and fragile peace, young people increasingly became a target of state legislation, (mass) organizations and other institutions. From the end of the First World War to the aftermath of the Second World War, Europe witnessed fundamental changes in the social regimes that determined societal power distribution. This special issue approaches the first half of the twentieth century through the lens of age and gender as interdependent categories of analysis. In doing so, the authors reveal how adult perceptions of youth and gender framed young men and women’s lives, as well as their roles in society. Vice versa, the authors explore how these perceptions collided with youth agency, probing the specific age – and gender-related dynamics of empowerment and organization. By zooming in on the concrete young actors and the institutional settings that limited their scope of action, processes of wayward appropriations will be contrasted with institutionalized attempts to control and lead ‘the young’. As such, the authors contribute to a global academic discussion on age, gender, the lifecycle and intersectionality.

TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

<p><strong>Background:</strong> A large part of the society as well as the scientists and actors in the field of agricultural and food systems consider that a profound transformation is necessary to reach more sustainable systems of production. This position is new and requires deep changes for this transformation. <strong>Objective:</strong> Our objective here is to share with the readers the possible potential new approaches to transform our agri-food systems towards more sustainability. <strong>Methodology:</strong> Traditionally, sustainability is assessed via three main dimensions: economic, environmental and social. This is what we consider here. <strong>Results:</strong> In agri-food systems, it is possible to identify each one of these dimensions, from the producer to the final consumer, and to identify elements to improve their sustainability. A simultaneous approach to all three dimensions is essential. A few examples from unsustainable crop and livestock production systems make it possible to approach the attitude to adopt, then to identify the paths of progress and concretize these approaches <strong>Implications:</strong> The above transformations will not occur spontaneously but will be a long and difficult process which will require profound modifications in the ways of thinking, especially in young actors. <strong>Conclusion:</strong> It is urgent to develop sustainable agri-food systems and essential to develop holistic approaches using simultaneously all the levers at our disposal, rather than using them separately. In intertropical areas, if there is water available, it is probably possible to develop truly new systems through ecological intensification. Industrialized countries should also develop a capacity for innovation that challenges their current monospecific systems, by reassociating crop and animal production</p>

Politics, Good Governance and The Imperative of Leadership Mentoring

The success or failure of governance is determined primarily by the quality of leadership overseeing the affairs of the entity in question. In a democracy, good-governance is berthed when political leadership is nurtured from the onset by a deliberate leadership mentoring process that inculcates the values of transparency, accountability, responsibility, productivity and efficiency on the mentee. This paper in its hypothesis, ties up the three key variables of politics, good governance and leadership mentoring, proffering the latter as the foundational tonic needed to nurture, grow and institutionalise a culture of effective political leadership, good-governance and progressively-working institutions for the benefit of the nation (Nigeria) and its citizens. Case study examples are drawn from the People’s Republic of China and India as nations which have harnessed and optimised suitable leadership mentoring processes to raise and nurture leaders who have gone on to facilitate the growth and development of their respective nations. This paper, which harps on Nigeria, concludes by recommending the institutionalisation of structured leadership-mentoring schemes and their liberalisation nationwide as critical paths to nurturing upcoming and young actors across, political parties, civil society, educational institutions and the society in general, with the requisite leadership ethics, ethos, skill and capacity to positively impact governance for the good and development of the nation.

How can singing voice practice change the spoken voice for actors - A case study

Acting is a skill that demands the correct use of the voice. The voice of an actor should be clear, resonant, and full so that the audience can understand the interpretation. A well-projected voice for actors is what this study is about. As it is known, the singing voice has many common aspects with the spoken voice. This article describes a study performed with a group of students from the Drama Department of the University of Évora to understand if the practice of singing voice would help the projection of spoken voice and consequently the interpretation of young actors.

Impact of agribusiness empowerment interventions on youth livelihoods: Insight from Africa

This study generates evidence to understand the impact of agribusiness empowerment programmes on youth livelihoods in developing countries based on the ENABLE-TAAT programme implemented in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda. A multistage sampling technique was used in obtaining primary agribusiness-level data from a sample of 1435 young agripreneurs from the study countries. An Endogenous Treatment Effect Regression (ETER) model was used to assess the impact of programme participation on youth livelihoods (income and food security). Results show that participation significantly increased youth's agripreneurship income by 7% and improved food security by 75% for the pooled analysis. The country disaggregation results show that participation led to a 54% and 37% increase in the income of participants in Nigeria and Uganda, respectively. Also, positive and significant impacts were obtained for food security in the two East African countries. These findings suggest policy interventions or programmes focusing on youth agribusiness empowerment, particularly those that target young actors along different agricultural value chains. The study also suggests interventions geared towards mitigating constraints to credit access and productive resources by young agripreneurs to ease barriers to working capital and business innovation.

웹기반 실험을 통해 살펴본 연령에 따른 긍정정서 편향과 자기연령 효과의 차이

Emotional information conveyed through facial expressions captures people's attention. While negative emotions closely related to general human survival tend to attract attention, as aging progresses, people tend to shift their attention more quickly to positive emotions than negative ones. This study utilized the dot-probe task to examine whether positive emotion bias varies with age among adults aged 20 to 69. Additionally, this study aimed to investigate whether the own-age effect occurs using photos of two age groups (i.e., a young actor and an elderly actor). The results of the study showed that participants of all age groups tended to focus more on positive emotions. The results also showed the own-age effect such that 30’s age group payed more attention to positive and negative facial expressions of the young actors. These results suggest that positive emotions are recognized as important social information for all age groups, and attention bias differs according to the nature of the stimuli.

Actors as Co-Creators in Contemporary Latvian Theatre

In Latvian theatre, the last decade has been a time of significant changes regarding the working methods of independent theatre movements. Two of the oldest independent theatres in Riga – Dirty Deal Teatro and Ģertrūde Street Theatre – have become a centre for various theatre productions, therefore moving towards the model of state repertoire theatres. Meanwhile, in recent years, several new theatre companies and creative groups have appeared in the field. Theatre troupe KVADRIFRONS, formed by four young actors having just graduated from the Latvian Academy of Culture, as well as the theatre company esARTe, led by director and teacher Elmārs Seņkovs and the ‘scandalous’ young actors trained in the so-called puppet theatre course at the Latvian Academy of Culture, – these are just a few examples of the new creative formations in Latvian theatre. While in repertoire theatre the creative process mostly lies on the shoulders of the stage director, the aforementioned theatre companies highlight the importance of the actor as co-creator – both in the artistic (devised theatre methods), and the administrative process (actors as managers, etc.). Has the profession of actor changed from performer to administrator? How does the administrative status of the newly founded theatre companies influence the work of freelance actors? How has the status of the actor changed in today’s society? The research tackles the topic of actor as co-creators focusing on the examples and experiences of new independent Latvian theatre companies and including significant social, as well as aesthetical aspects.

THE ISSUES OF ACTING IN THEATRE AND CINEMA

The article explores the fundamental aspects and differences of acting in theatre and cinema, as well as analyzes the main factors and tools of both theatre and film. Considering the distinction between these two arts and the fact that theatre and cinema operate under their own rules and laws, which directly affects both their visual aesthetics and the way actors perform and exist on stage and screen. Theatre is a much older art form, while cinema, as a result of technological progress, is its continuation, a certain transformation, a different form of perceiving reality and telling human existence. Despite their differences, these two arts enrich and complement each other, which will be further examined in detail. One of the main objects of both cinema and theatre has always been human beings, hence the participation of the actor has always been a key component of these arts. However, both theatre and cinema have their own specificities and characteristics, so acting skills require a different approach and certain skills to be more successful and convincing in these different contexts. Naturally, this led to the emergence of terms such as “film actor” and “theatre actor”, because the specificity of cinema, its tools, and the unique language of artistic expression on screen required a change in the actor’s way of existence. The article analyzes the main theoretical and practical aspects of acting in theatre and cinema, emphasizing the importance of changing approaches to training young actors. A brief investigation into the origins of theatre, the emergence of cinema, and its development is conducted, with particular attention to the specificity and differences of acting in film. The article serves as a kind of exploration of the main factors that influence the actor’s existence on screen, their organic nature, and expressiveness. The issues and materials discussed in the article can serve as a stimulus for further research and methodological analysis.

Happening, a Controversial Hybrid Way of Cultural Expression

"The aim of this article is to explore an experimental acting exercise that took place in 2015 during a survival workshop guided by the Romanian-Canadian stage director Alexander Hausvater. The name of the workshop was “The total actor – The survival” and took place in Colibița, a mountain resort in Bistrița-Năsăud county involving 25 young actors. The actors embodied different human typologies for almost 12 hours in the town of Bistrița. The exercise was conducted in different areas of the town and each actor was supposed to remain in the “skin” of the character no matter the circumstances. Even though they interacted with civilians from the urban environment, they had to continue to exhibit the traits and features assigned to the character as if they were on stage. Many of the citizens were taken in by the deceitful appearances and believed that the actors they interacted with were real people with real issues. The closeness between reality and pretence was so tight that some of the spectators insisted on helping the needy, underprivileged typologies some of them were interpreting. Consequently, the difficulty in going on with the acting part became even harder for the participants in the workshops because of this interference. The main purpose of this type of exercise was to point out the complexity an actor is capable of and the involvement s/he must show in front of a changing audience, with a nonconformist moving stage. Were the actors able to prove the director’s expectations according to his given definition of a true actor? Were the actors ready enough to exploit previously unpaved roads? Was this type of practice beneficial to achieve the ultimate goal? Is happening the best way of showing the mixture of abilities an actor has? Keywords: happening, hybrid, workshop, survival, Hausvater’s artistic experiment, street performance, complexity, challenge, remain in character."

CHILDREN ’ S OPERA BRUNDIBÁR BY HANS KRÁSA – UNIQUE STAGE HISTORY AND CONTEMPORARY SIGNIFICANCE

Brundibár, an opera written by the Czech composer Hans Krása in 1938, has gained worldwide fame since the end of World War II and has become a representa- tion of the global resistance to genocide and crimes against humanity. Brundibár was performed fifty-five times by the young Jewish inmates of the Theresienstadt concentration camp (Czechoslovakia) during 1943–1944. Depicting the victory of the helpless children over the tyrannical organ grinder Brundibár (“bumble-bee” in Czech), this opera symbolized the triumph of the good over the evil. It provided the prisoners of the camp with the hope for the liberation. In the autumn of 1944, composer Hans Krása, conductor Rafael Schächter, stage designer František Zelenka, and 150 young actors and members of the orchestra were deported in the cattle wagons to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. After the deportation of the artists, the most popular theatre production at Theresienstadt was silenced only to be revived after the end of Word War II. This paper aims to demonstrate that the role of Brundibár goes far beyond a common opera production. Brundibár has a great significance and a very special meaning when performed in the countries with the authoritarian regimes in the past, e. g. in Latvia, who faced mass deportations of the Latvians in 1941–1949 and lost the majority of its Jewish population during the Holocaust. The paper talks about the importance of the art pieces about the genocide in the 20th century that should be presented to a wide audience to keep the traumatic memory of the past alive in the memory of the today’s society.

City diplomacy and public policy in the era of COVID-19: networked responses from the Greek Capital

In recent decades, more and more young actors at the international level have been claiming and aspiring to play a significant role in managing public policy issues with global reach. The recent pandemic highlighted the asymmetry of nation-state responses in managing this health threat. At a time that the return-of-the-state scenario sounded familiar, it was misleading as well. Although each national government was focusing on its own people, and each claimed to have been better prepared to fight the crisis than its neighbors, governance gaps were filled by networks of sub-national authorities, whose partnerships provided a wider geographical perspective of policy decisions. In this framework, this article assesses the role of the city diplomacy, focusing on the pandemic initiatives of the city of Athens that, due to its international affiliations, managed to fill the gaps of the measures taken for the most vulnerable groups by the central government during the pandemic of COVID-19. Desk-based research and the use of secondary sources provide the scope for our analysis.

The Embassies’ Crisis: Albania of 1990

The Embassies’ Crisis: Albania of 1990

Some other ‘primitive forms of classification’. Contribution to the study of children's collective representations

This methods paper addresses a simple, yet curiously understudied question: When do we first acquire the ability to view specific persons, properties and practices as ‘similar’ or ‘different’, ‘equal’ or ‘unequal’ in social status? Despite sociology's theoretical commitment to the importance of ‘primary socialization’, sociological research on the ontogenesis of our ability to situate ourselves and others in social space remains scarce. This paper argues that the reasons for sociology's ‘child neglect’ are not purely conceptual, but also methodological in nature. Conventional sociological methods are in fact not particularly well-geared to dealing with the obstacles that accompany the study of young actors. This paper discusses three of these obstacles – mastery of language, limitations in attention-span and the asymmetry of the researcher/respondent-relationship – and presents a visual method designed to circumvent or minimize their impact. This method centers around a classificatory game that allows children to combine a set of drawings of persons and objects according to different and even opposing principles of classification (i.e. color or social status). Preliminary results produced by this method suggest that an elementary ‘social sense’ already starts to form among preschoolers.

JOSIP KULUNDŽIĆ KAO GLUMAČKI PEDAGOG

Josip Kulundžić’s engagement in the field of drama pedagogy was multi- faceted and fruitful. For almost three decades, he taught in state drama schools and a private drama studio. Kulundžić’s pedagogical work ranged from the scientific field of theatrology to the artistic fields of acting, directing and dramaturgy. This paper reports on Kulundžić’s drama pedagogy, manifested in two aspects: theoretical, which refers to designing drama curriculum, and practical, which refers to the implementation of the curriculum in teaching drama. The data collection method, content analysis method, biographical and compara- tive methods were used in the research. Based on Kulundžić’s own writings on pedagogy, on testimonies given by his students, fellow professors and assistants, artistic collaborators and managers, as well as on theater experts’ and critics’ opinions, it can be concluded that Kulundžić was deeply dedicated to pedagogical issues and that his approach in working with young actors was enthousiastic – he taught them dramatic theory, but also supported their creative expression on stage, revealed their hidden potentials, encouraged and moti- vated them. These testimonies lead to the conclusion that Josip Kulundžić deserved to get a significant place in the field of drama theory and practice.

The Mathematics of Acting: A Workbook by Dréa Lewis

Reviewed by: The Mathematics of Acting: A Workbook by Dréa Lewis Mary Trotter The Mathematics of Acting: A Workbook. By Dréa Lewis (she/her). Coppell, TX: Dream of Dréa, 2019; pp. 122. The Mathematics of Acting: A Workbook is born out of a thesis project, but has the potential to fill a great need in an acting classroom comprised of students who may, or may not, come with a background in math or science. Dréa Lewis begins by explaining how she came to write the book. Frustrated at how the principles of her college acting training had become jumbled or forgotten, she sought another way into the work. The book addresses how to make a connection to character through four different areas: Mind, Body, Voice, and Face. In this approach, however, science is the foundation for exploration. Lewis utilizes math-based principles and activities to more efficiently explore character, taking the reader through her personal experiences of working as an engineer and actor. Each section offers helpful visuals, learning activities, and brain games. There are also exercises applicable to each area that would make great additions to a classroom for beginning actors or non-theatre majors. The final chapters consist of worksheet pages on which students can write scenes and express creativity based on the four areas explained in the text. Lewis also offers a “sample journal” she kept during the creation of a character for the first role she was cast in outside of graduate school. These pages offer a look at how her techniques and exercises can be applied by an actor outside of the classroom. “Math & Mind” is the first area of analysis. Lewis’s initial aim is to help actors to understand the personality of the character. Utilizing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Steady State Theorem, she defines what the constants are for a character and forecasts how a character might respond to circumstances in the play. Lewis then uses questions developed by Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger in the The Art of Speed Reading People to help the character become more tangible. These questions define how the character energizes, gathers information, makes decisions, and organizes the world. The actor uses answers to these questions to inform how the character connects with other characters and responds to events. Here, Lewis uses the concept of parabolic trajectory and the second law of thermodynamics to explore how energy and emotion transfer from one character to the next and thus affect the trajectory of a scene. To tackle the second area, “Math & Body,” Lewis begins by referencing some techniques more commonly known to the theatre professional: Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais Method. Expanding on this work, she uses calculus and geometry to encourage actors “to be aware [End Page 46] of angles [they] can position [their] body in, and achieve physical expressions of a character” (31). Lewis implements the Cartesian Coordinate System to analyze the distance between specific points of the body and explore position and movement. These exercises could be particularly helpful for young actors having trouble being present in the body. The discoveries of the second area lead Lewis to the third, “Math & Voice,” and allow her to use her experience as a computer engineering student studying aerodynamics. She applies Bernoulli’s Principle and the understanding of speech rate and latency to the expression of emotion, and argues that “great storytellers possess super reflexes which is manifested by projecting different resonances (throat, neck, nasal, and head), and by creating space to attach notes to words while speaking” (43). Relating the emotional state of a character to the number of speech sounds per minute, Lewis offers a new, more mathematical way of thinking about how an actor might express the content of a scene. In the fourth area, “Math & Face,” Lewis draws on Charles Darwin’s contributions to genetic science in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, using a face map to analyze which areas of the face are affected for which expression. She makes the point that the recognition of a change in emotion is expressed first in the face, and that actors can reverse this process by...

‘M[aster] Monkesters schollars’: Richard Mulcaster, Physical Education, and the Early Modern Boy Companies

This article reconsiders the pedagogical theories of leading Elizabethan teacher Richard Mulcaster in the light of early modern boy company repertories. Focusing on Mulcaster’s teachings relating to the skilled, moving body, the article traces his connections to the Children of Paul’s and the Children of the Blackfriars to suggest that the boy company stage became a site that explored boys’ physical skills. The early modern boy company repertories, the article ultimately suggests, positioned their young actors as ‘Mr Mulcaster’s scholars’.

Socio-Cultural Reproduction of a Generation through the Eventfulness of Childhood

One of the most important characteristics of generations in the modern humanities is the indication of the recreation of traditional cultural values while producing new cultural practices. The article accumulates data of a sociological study of young people (2018, an online survey of 774 respondents aged 18—21) born at the junction of two conventional generations. As one of the criteria of socio-cultural reproduction, the article suggests using the age of the debut and consolidation of various events related to the field of culture into permanent practice. Based on quantitative data (the age of starting, average age, percentage of coverage or exclusion from the event), the authors prove that traditional practices (reading, organizing additional education, visiting libraries, theater, etc.) are consolidated at an earlier age (preschool and primary school). In the article, new socio-cultural practices are designated as not normative, typical, and ubiquitous for children, but already quite mass events in comparison with the historical and social situation of the 20th century. These are innovative practices (including the practice of mastering the information and communication technologies and the Internet), independent actions of young actors in the field of consumer culture, and some manipulations with the body (tattooing, piercing, etc.) that, according to the study, manifest themselves in adolescence and youth. The article identifies a stable group of young people (from complete urban families of the middle economic level) who undergo the traditional eventfulness and are therefore close to the generation of their parents. The authors substantiate the necessity of working to support the socio-cultural reproduction in adolescence.